


All's Fair in Love and Ducks

by Crollalanza



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AU, Ducks, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Daichi visits the park during his lunch hour, it's to clear his head so he can pitch to a new client. It's certainly not so he'll become entangled in a duck feeding war with a mysterious (but incredibly beautiful) stranger with silver blond eyebrows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Fair in Love and Ducks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sherryandgin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherryandgin/gifts).



> Written for Jo, who prompted me for my 3k follower ficlet challenge. 
> 
> 'PROMPT DAICHI WORKS IN AN OFFICE AND TAKES HIS LUNCH BREAKS IN A PARK AND GETS INTO A DUCK FEEDING COMPETITION WITH A MYSTERIOUS SILVER-HAIRED BABE!!!!!'
> 
> Here you go, beautiful.

It was a cold day, with frost still covering the grass at noon, but Sawamura Daichi still walked to the park for his lunch, fortified by a thick red scarf, a large Americano, a hoisin chicken wrap, and a bag of assorted bagels.

He needed air, needed the open space so he could clear his head. Most of all he needed solitude so he could think.

The presentation was set for three that afternoon. Ishigawa-san, no less, the chairman of the biggest clothing store in Japan, was sitting in on the meeting. The meeting Daichi had now been told he had to head up because his immediate superior was down with a virulent bout of flu.

It was an excellent opportunity, and one that normally Daichi would have leapt at, but for the fact that he’d had no real time to prepare. Sure, he knew the facts - he’d assisted on various advertising campaigns, but this was the first fashion account he’d worked on, and the first presentation he’d ever been asked to lead.

It could be a triumph. But equally, it could be a disaster, and his immediate superior’s superior had left him in no doubt that if they didn’t land the account, then Daichi would be back writing copy for cereal bars before the day was out.

He sipped his coffee as he walked, mulling things over in his head until he reached his favourite park bench, where he sat heavily. Exhaling, he watched the breath in his mouth turn white in the air, wisping to grey then disappearing.

“It will go well. I can do this,” he murmured to himself, over and over.

“Quack!”

He grinned. “Hello, boy,” Daichi said to the duck waddling towards him. It was his favourite duck, a mandarin with a red bill and face, white crest, and a purple chest. This particular mandarin, however, had a webbed foot that stuck out at an angle when he walked, and a quack quite different from the other ducks, sort of slow and booming rather than the excited gabbles from the others on the pond.

“Quack!” He waddled closer, waggling his bum in the air.

“All right, I’ve got you some food,” Daichi replied, and delved into the plastic bag, bringing out a half eaten bagel.  He tore it into pieces, dropping fragments on the path in front of him, and smiled when Boomer – his name for the duck – pecked them up.

With Boomer occupied, Daichi sipped more of his coffee, letting its warmth wave through him. He could breathe easier out here, away from the stresses of the office, and think clearer too. There was something lacking, he thought, in the pitch. Something to really hook in the client, but he couldn’t work out what it was.

“Quack!”

“Yeah, yeah, in a bit, you greedy thing,” Daichi sighed, and reached back into the bag.

But when he looked back up, his duck had moved. No longer was he staring at Daichi, his beady eyes demanding scraps, but was scooping up another piece of bread from the grass and padding away towards the next bench.

And another man, bundled up in a bobble hat, scarf and gloves, who was throwing Boomer what looked like brioche.

 “Hey, Goose!”  the man called. “Here you go.”

_Goose?_

“That’s a duck,” said Daichi.

“Hmm?”

“Not a goose,” he explained.

Then the stranger looked at him. And smiled.

And Daichi’s words stopped at his lips, seizing his throat and he couldn’t do anything more than gape at the man because he was probably the most beautiful man – person, even – he’d ever seen.

“I _call_ him Goose,” the vision was saying, throwing more brioche to Boomer.

“Uh ... um ... why?”

“It’s his quack,” Beautiful-san explained. “Don’t you think he sounds like he’s been taking elocution lessons from a goose?”

Snorting, Daichi twisted around a little so he could face the man. “Yeah, he does a bit. I call him Boomer.”

“Ah, you come here a lot do you?”

“When I can step out the office,” Daichi replied.

“Hmm, I’ve not seen you here before,” the man said. And now he angled his body towards Daichi, crossing his legs (his rather slim and long legs) which were encased in sober grey trousers and seemed altogether too dull for him. But peering down, Daichi’s lips twitched when he saw the man’s socks, pale blue but adorned with pink shrimps.

 “You come here regularly, then?” Daichi asked, hoping he sounded casual.

“Same as you, I suppose, but enough times that Goose recognises me,” he said, and lowered his voice, winking conspiratorially. “He loves brioche, you know. It’s his favourite.”

“Bagels, actually,” Daichi replied. “I always have one for him.”

The man raised his eyebrows, and now Daichi looked closer, he saw they were silver blond in colour, so he started to wonder about his hair and whether that was the same colour.

“He appears to like my brioche better,” the man observed, throwing one more brioche piece on the grass, this time closer to his feet. He smiled a little slyly, touching the tip of his tongue to his lips.

“Obviously, but then ...” Daichi mock glowered, then delving into his bag, he pulled out the pièce de résistance – a fresh cinnamon bagel.  “Hey, Boomer, look what I’ve got for you.”

“Quack!”Alerted by Daichi’s call, Boomer gobbled up the brioche, then scuttled towards him, flapping his wings. “Quack, Quack!”

“See what I mean?” Daichi said, trying to keep the crow out of his voice.

Not that the man was listening. “Goose!”he cried, reaching into another paper bag.“What’s this?”

“A cupcake!” Daichi yelped, especially when Boomer began to waddle away. “That’s cheating!”

“All’s fair in love and ducks,” declared the stranger, and crumbled some up in his hand. “Here, Goose, have some yummy cake.”

“Boomer!” Daichi insisted, breaking part of the bagel off to throw at Boomer’s feet.

Momentarily distracted from the tempting fare from the stranger, Boomer gulped down the scrap, twitching his head between the two men.

“CAKE!”

“Quack!”

“Bagel!”

“Quack!”

Tilting his head to one side,  the stranger held out the cake, wafting it in his hands and cooing as he called. “Goosey, Goooosey, come and have this caaaa—aaaake,” he  sang.

To Daichi’s complete and utter non-surprise (because he was having trouble staying seated) Boomer or maybe he was Goose, waddled his weird sidestep towards the cake, pecking his beak into the stranger’s cupped hands, and wriggling his bum as he ate.

“Goose knows what he likes, Stranger-san,” the man said, winking slyly.

Girding his loins against this fresh onslaught because the man had a mole – a most beautiful mole – under his left eye, Daichi cleared his throat.

“Boomer,” he called, not cooing, not singing, but in a commandingly deep tone. “Bayyyy-gel, Booo-ooomer. Come and have some cinnamon bagel.”

He glanced across at the stranger, (who for some reason was staring at him, mouth agape) and started to smile, then clucked his tongue and continued to woo (yes, that was the word) the mandarin duck now staring balefully at the pair of them.

“Booooo-merrrr,” Daichi continued, leaning forward as he broke the bagel in half. “Look, what I have for you.”

Just then, the duck darted towards him, stretching out his neck and snatched the bagel half, at the same time nipping Daichi’s thumb. Surprised, he dropped the other half, and Boomer – looking smug (if ducks could look smug) – speared it with his beak, then sprint-waddled to the pond.

“Ahh, you win,” the stranger said.

He was getting to his feet, brushing the remaining cake crumbs from his trousers and rewinding the blue scarf around his neck.

“I think Boomer won,” Daichi said, a little wistfully. “He’s certainly had a good lunch today.”

“Mmm, and I lost my favourite cupcake,” the man replied.

Grinning, Daichi pulled out the rest of his lunch. “We could share if you want. I’m not that hungry.”

“Didn’t your mother warn you about talking to strangers in the park?” the man replied, but he was smiling.

“If we exchange names,” Daichi murmured, “then we’re hardly strangers.” He coughed, stood up, and made an approximation of a formal bow. “Sawamura Daichi - ”

“Excuse me,” the man interrupted, and with an apologetic smile, he pulled a phone out of his pocket.

“Uh-huh.... yes ... I’m only in the park ... yes, I can be there. Just give me twenty... okay ... ten... yes, I promise. I’m leaving now.”

He sighed as he hung up the phone. “I have to go. That was my boss. I’m apparently late.”  He bowed back, then started to jog away. It was when he was half way across the grass that he looked over his shoulder. “Maybe we can feed Goose together again. I’ll look out for you!”

Daichi raised his hand. “Yeah, that’d be –”

But the man, the really rather beautiful man, had sped up and was now out of earshot.

“Nice,” Daichi finished lamely.

“Quack!”

Even Boomer sounded sad.

***

“Sawamura!” his boss barked. “Liven up. Ishigawa-sama is in reception. You are confident you can land this account, aren’t you? I can always assign someone else.”

“Leave it to me,” Daichi replied, bowing stiffly. He turned away, the portfolio and power point in his hands, and a faint smile on his face. He had his hook, now, it had occurred to him on leaving the park, still doleful over the opportunities missed.

 

 

“And so the premise of our campaign,” Daichi summed up, after nearly half an hour of pitching to a client, who’d stared loftily at him from the most comfortable executive chair in the room. “Is that ordinary people wear your clothes. No celebrities, no stars or prima-donnas, but ordinary people, who meet by chance and maybe find they have something else in common beyond the label in their clothes.”

He licked his lips, fearing he’d lost _his_ chance as Ishigawa was frowning at his wristwatch.

“These meetings could be in a shopping mall,” he said, ploughing on, “at an airport, even in a park where a couple could ... uh ... feed ducks, say.”

“Ducks?” Ishigawa leant forwards. “Why ducks?”

“They’re fun,” Daichi said, trying a smile, because suddenly Ishigawa looked warmer. “And ... uh ... the mandarin duck is very colourful, which reminded me ... um ... us ... of your clothes.”

“Ducks,” the old man repeated, looking thoughtful. He was about to say something, but the next moment, there was a knock on the door, and someone burst inside, stumbling onto the floor.

“Sorry, sorry, s-sorry,” a rather flustered man stammered. “I couldn’t find the place.”

A man with blond almost silver hair, an elegant grey suit and - Daichi looked down - pale blue socks adorned with shrimps.

With more than a grin, Daichi reached down, offering his hand to pull him up.

“Sawamura Daichi,” he murmured.”Hello, again.”

“Sugawara Koushi,” he replied, and gave Daichi the benefit of a headlight beam of a grin, complete with a wink, “but I prefer Suga.”

“As you’re _finally_ here,” Ishigawa drawled, “then I shall leave you to hammer out the details, Koushi. My grandson handles marketing, when he can remember to turn up.”

Daichi blinked. “Y-You’ve decided?”

“The campaign is good. It’s been well thought out. But it’s the idea of chance meetings,” Ishigawa mused, nodding his head, “that I really like.”

“Chance meetings?” Sugawara asked.

“And ducks,” he replied and ruffled his grandson’s hair. He inclined his head to Daichi. “It was your pitch that convinced me, so I’m going to request that you’re given sole charge of the campaign, Sawamura-kun.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Of course,” Ishigawa continued, “this does mean you will have to work closely with my grandson, who handles the marketing.” He gave Sugawara a wintry smile, then tempered it with a fond chuckle, “I assure you that despite the socks and his poor sense of direction, he is very good at what he does. He just needs someone to take him under their wing.”

“You make me sound like a duckling,” muttered Sugawara.

Duckling, yes, with that hair and smile, both shining and utterly adorable. Daichi grinned at him, loving, already, the way his cheeks were pinking. And then he laughed, because Sugawara’s stomach gave the most enormous rumble.

“Perhaps we should discuss a few things over food,” he said, adding with a smirk, “I know a place that sells wonderful bagels.”

“Sounds tempting,” Sugawara replied, licking his lips with an absurdly pink tongue. “But I much prefer cupcakes.”


End file.
